I do agree with you more here, but there is one item that needs to be clarified in this case: we do know that cleaning seeds in this case was done primarily with the idea to plant them later no?
If that is the case, then no, I can not go for the argument **griffin1977 **is making.
Really, I would think there are better reasons why to have a beef against Monsanto, there is the side issue of weeds developing resistance to their Roundup herbicide.
Me too, 100%. There is nothing that could be more important than the future genetic make-up of the planet.
The way it’s going, all natural foods could be wiped from the planet within decades. Only later we find out the health consequences of it. It’s like how nothing was thought to be wrong with processed and modern foods at first… later on we find the problems. Just because we can’t see the damage they’re doing, doesn’t mean it’s not there!!!
You can’t just randomly change things in a plant, put it through some utterly STUPID tests and say okay there’s nothing wrong with it.
They say they will “modify the genes to make a food more nutritious”. But what is “more nutritious”? There is no definition of more nutritious. The best possible foods to eat are the ones we are perfectly evolved to eat.
Not only should Percy Schmeiser have won his case in every way, he should have sued Monsanto for infecting his crop. Every farmer who has their crop infected with Monsanto seeds has had their property infringed upon by Monsanto.
Once these genes are in the air, nothing will stop them. Our descendants will in all likelihood never be able to eat raw, natural food again because of what Monsanto is doing. Chemical pollution is bad enough, but DNA replicates itself. You wouldn’t ever be able to mop it up, because it is increasingly what you eat.
This terminator gene is the one thing that would save humanity from this, but for some reason a lot of the anti-GM foods people are not trying to press it. Some of it has to do with allegorical nonsense such as “how can death of life be good?”, and most of it stems from the amount of farmers (in particular millions from poorer countries), who were horrified at not being able to replant their seeds.
You know how natural food is considered to be the most healthy? And how so many people are in such pain and getting so fat and so many diseases because of artificial foods? IF WE ALLOW THIS THEN THERE WON’T BE ANY NATURAL FOOD ANYMORE! IT WILL ALL BE DESTROYED BY NAMELESS, FACELESS CORPERATIONS! THE HUMAN RACE WILL BE RUINED! How could we allow that irreversible situation for our descendants?
The terminator technology is the only thing we’ve got, our last line of defence against GMOs getting out of control. These people who are against terminator technology are complete idiots, food will be ruined forever and it will be partly their fault! Haven’t they learned anything from the mistakes of processing food and the unpredictable and chronic damage it does to health? It’s because this random stuff called food no longer matches what we are evolutionarily designed to eat.
They have this thing called “substantial equivalence”, where they do some tests, and if the tests seem to show the foods acting about the same, then they call them “substantially equivalent”, like they are the same as the natural food. The fact that they don’t seem to be doing anything badly just means the damage is more subtle. It just protects the GM companies because it means you won’t be able to prove that their food did it.
They will say that it’s for the population, that it’s for “food security” that we must have the GM foods. I would rather starve to death along with billions of others than allow these foods on us. The population is out of control, nothing is going to help that except trying to get the population become more under control. Monsanto is holding starving people as an appeal to emotion when they won’t solve anything and all they care about is money. They have come and threatened governments, in particular the less well developed ones but even the EU has been put under severe pressure to adopt GM foods. These people are the scum of the earth.
Take a look at this documentary to see what Monsanto did and is doing and there are plenty of others like it:
Do you have a cite the washers knew it was patented soy? A marijuana seed is a little easier to recognize than telling two kinds of soy bean apart.
Yes, we know that, as a finding of fact from the court case cited earlier by Bricker. To quote:
“The primary reason – if not only commercial reason - for cleaning soybean seed is to have it prepared for replanting: by removing this trash from the harvested crop, it is conditioned for planting so that it does not impair the planting equipment and ensures that viable seed is placed into the ground.”
I assume a finding of fact from the district court is acceptable evidence. 
Yes. District court again:
“In 2002 Monsanto sent a letter by certified mail to Parr explaining that it was the owner of the ‘605 patent and that Roundup Ready crop seed was covered by the ‘605 patent. This letter also explained that a limited-use license was required to use the crop seed and that saving a crop grown from the licensed seed for planting or selling for replanting was an infringement. The letter stated that Monsanto had information that Parr’s seed cleaning business facilitated seed replanting, and further that Parr encouraged and induced growers to clean and replant soybeans which he knew contained Monsanto’s patented technology. Finally, the notice requested that Parr cease any actions that induced infringement of the ‘605 patent…”
“At some point in 2003 or 2004, Williams testified that he asked the defendant about cleaning Roundup Ready soybeans, and was informed by the defendant that it was permissible for a farmer to save Roundup Ready soybeans for his own use. After this discussion, Williams felt that it would be safe to save, clean and replant Roundup Ready soybeans. Williams saved some of his 2005 Roundup Ready soybean crop, had it cleaned by the defendant, and planted that saved seed in the 2006 growing season.”
To add stupidity to greed, these “merely seed washers” were dumb enough to into writing what they were doing:
"Parr provides his customers with an invoice for his services which include the following disclaimer: As of the date this ticket was printed, the U.S. Congress, through federal seed laws, has expressly protected the rights of farmers to save grain that they have produced for use to seed land that they own, lease or rent.
Some seed/chemical companies attempt to circumvent those rights by requiring farmers to sign agreements giving up those rights in order to purchase certain brands/types of seed. Custom seed cleaning is not a party to such agreements and will, in no way, hold itself responsible for compliance or enforcement of said agreements…
Monsanto sent a letter by certified mail to Parr explaining that it was the
owner of the ‘605 patent and that Roundup Ready crop seed was covered by the ‘605 patent. This letter also explained that a limited-use license was required to use the crop seed and that saving a crop grown from the licensed seed for planting or selling for replanting was an infringement. The letter stated that Monsanto had information that Parr’s seed cleaning business facilitated seed replanting, and further that Parr encouraged and induced growers to clean and replant soybeans which he knew contained Monsanto’s patented technology. Finally, the notice requested that Parr cease any actions that induced infringement of the ‘605 patent"
There is no doubt here that these seed washers knew that they were washing patented material. They were also informed by Monsanto, in writing and verbally, that washing such material was illegal and asked to stop. They not only refused to stop their illegal activities, they actually *encouraged *their customers, both verbally and in writing, to undertake the illegal activity.
And griffin1977 wants us to accept that these people were “merely washing seeds”. We have undisputed evidence that they knew that replanting the seed was illegal. We have writing in their own hand stating that they were encouraging customers to undertake this illegal activity, despite being informed that both the sowing and the encouragement was illegal.
There is no disputing that these people knowingly facilitated an illegal act for profit. Yet according to griffin1977 this is standard farming practice.
Well it’s not standard practice for any farmer I know, mate.
**ModernPrimate *, that post of yours is just about the dumbest thing I have seen. There’s really nothing else to say, it’s just dumb from top to bottom. Every word of it is dumb, including "AND"and “THE”.
Blake, your posts here suggest to me that you are a very low quality poster, while we’re being honest.
I think if you didn’t like my post, you should just have left it, and not started trolling with remarks like that that compels another person to reply to them.
Did that small town elevator use any of those methods ? Did they sneak into Monsanto’s lab to steal their gene splicing techniques and pass them off their own ? That is what patent law is designed to prevent. They did nothing of the thought, they just cleaned seeds.
The process by which corn produces more corn is a TOTALLY natural one. Using patent law to make that an illegal act is absolute insanity.
If it’s totally natural, why do farmers have to hire seed cleaners?
There is nothing untrue about it, the facts speak for themselves.
Monsanto is using PATENT LAW to punish people who have done nothing except allow natural organisms to reproduce using natural biological processes.
If the patent is about genetic engineering techniques, show me photos of Mr Carr’s laboratory, and describe how exactly he used these sophisticated techniques Monsanto is so proud of.
It’s been a long while since I’ve been this embarrassed for a poster in GD. Blake and Bricker are absolutely mopping the floor with you, providing cites and legal precedent, and the only tool you have on your side is the Caps Lock key.
You would be smart to quit while you’re way, way behind.
Do you have any comment about the actual text of the law, the one I’ve repeatedly quoted:
35 U.S.C. § 271(b) provides: “Whoever actively induces infringement of a patent shall be liable as an infringer?”
Do you agree that this is the law?
I’m seeing a fair bit of excluded middle going on here. It’s entirely possible that Monsanto’s patent is legitimate and that enabling the violation of that patent is actionable, and that Monsanto are giant flaming assholes in the manner in which they go about enforcing their patent.
Well, on that proposition we could probably have a fair debate. My initial reaction is that Monsanto wouldn’t get anywhere by asking, “Pretty please?” In fact, Monsanto crafted a way to avoid these sorts of fights and then Greenpeace et al hit them with such a brutal anti-marketing campaign that Monsanto agreed not to use it. At that time, in fact, comments were made pointing out that Monsanto had the legal right to enforce its patent, and shouldn’t use the Terminator gene to do what the law gave it every right to do.
Most of the opposition to Monsanto techniques I have seen comes from the aggressively ignorant, such as griffin. But I’m willing to be convinced that Monsanto are being dicks about things.
This law is intend to protect inventors from other inventors stealing their idea (the precedent you linked to above clearly shows that). Using this in this case is a massive injustice. No one here was using Monsanto’s gene splicing inventions, these farmers were not extracting genes from viruses and inserting them in plants. They are just allowing plants to reproduce.
The fact you keep confusing copyright and patent law shows you don’t understand how wrong headed these laws are.
Who knew being a farmer was so easy? Here I thought it required a lot of big machines, hard work and know-how, turns out you just let the plants reproduce.
I’m not confusing anything.
I quoted a specific section of patent law and asked if you understood it.
You said that the law was intended to prevent inventors from having their inventions stolen.
OK. Now, Monsanto has an invention. You see, don’t you, that Monsanto’s U.S. Patent No. 5,352,605 describes an invention.
That is not a plant that occurs in nature. It’s a plant Monsanto invented.
When other people use that plant without paying Monsanto, they violate Monsanto’s patent.
When a third party encourages and assists other people in violating Monsanto’s patent, that third party violates 35 U.S.C. § 271(b).
Specifically and clearly, griffin, what part of that argument do you contend is wrong?
If you don’t think that is what farming boils down to at the end of the day I’d recommended you re-take middle school biology.
Except that we’ve been doing it for thousands of years, and long ago, they didn’t bother with testing at all! The only thing different now is that we’re more precise.
Which is what? None of the food you eat was around when humans evolved (almost all of the evolving, anyway). (Almost) all the food you eat has been genetically modified.
Hey Blake, you were wrong. ModernPrimate did say at least one correct thing!
No, its a corn plant that has been grown by mankind for millennia with with a handful if genes added.
This is part that makes absolutely no sense. Patent law protects INVENTIONS not PLANTS. I cannot take Monsanto’s idea any incorporate it into my design without paying them. No one is doing this.
In the case above someone deliberately designed a needle in such a way as to copy someone else’s patented idea. None of these farmers sat down in a lab and designed some corn using Monsantos techniques. That is what patent law is intended to prevent.
Applying that law to natural plant reproduction is insane. Patent law was NEVER intended to be applied in this way, and makes absolutely no sense in this context.
If you think that is what farming boils down to at the end of the day, I suggest you re-sing that old preschool favorite, Oats, Peas, Beans and Barley Grow.